Mudbarn Weblog

I picked up a full set of equipment of my own and brewed up a batch of hefeweisen and a holiday mead on the same day. The hef was the same as the first batch, since it went so well the first time. The mead was 3lb of California clover honey, a variety of spices, and a dash of orange juice.

I was able to bottle the hef after 1 and a half weeks in the fermenter. It was highly active in the early stages, blowing the stopper across the room and foam up the walls and onto the ceiling. That was exciting!

The mead is still quite murky, and I’m giving it another few weeks to see how it clarifies before racking it into a secondary fermentation.

Pictures to be added soon

For my first batch, I borrowed JM’s equipment. Due to the success, and my wife’s desire to start making mead, I’ll be getting my own. I need to start considering my brewing schedule.

First, I’ll probably try some recipes to see what I actually enjoy, and start experimenting with ingredients. I want to see what my consumption pattern is like, then figure out what will keep me in beer but not overrun.

I want to have an assortment for various occasions like dinner, weekend daytime, steak, chicken, company, party, etc.

I’m expecting to have a range of ales from light, almost flavorless to stouts and some points between. My big events will be the FnF campout and Burning Man. I hope to have enough to share for both of those.

I also have to consider bottling, or perhaps kegging, and definitely storage with consideration of the varieties I have on-hand.

When I first tasted the malt for the Hefeweizen, I realized that there was something about the flavor that just wasn’t right for me. It was good in general, but I know I can do better.

I started researching what malt actually is and how I could use my experience to narrow down my options. Malt is finely ground and processed grain. The most common places that the general public is exposed to malt is breakfast cereal. Some may also have tried malted milk ball candies and Ovaltine. Some may have had a soda shoppe malt. The one malt that really sticks in my taste memory is Cheerios, which is almost pure oat malt. That’s probably my favorite breakfast cereal. So now I’m on the hunt for the ultimate oat malt.

Next, I started considering how the oats would fit into a brew recipe. Joleen wants to make a mead, so there’s about to be a lot of honey in the house. Honey, oat malt… HONEY NUT CHEERIOS BEER! So I googled around for honey oatmeal homebrew and came up with some ideas for recipes:

Mad Monk Oatmeal Honey Wheat

Damned Kids Oatmeal Stout

I popped one of my bottles to go with dinner (pizza) and it had a halfway decent head on the pour. I’ll take a picture next time I open one. I was a little concerned about the sediment when I bottled, so I marked the last dozen bottles for my use only, but there was very little actual sediment left in the bottle and none in the glass.

The flavor is already starting to mellow. It tastes “lighter” than it did on the 31st. It may just be the effect of the carbonation. Whatever the case, I’m happier than ever with the way the batch turned out.

On New Year’s Eve afternoon, the bubbles settled down to once every 73 seconds, so I called JM and he brought over the bottling equipment.

While he was driving over, I started peeling labels off a bunch of Heineken bottles. This involved softening the labels in hot water, peeling them off, then scrubbing off the glue.

Then we siphoned the beer into the bottling bucket. This gave me my first opportunity to taste the finished product. It’s still young, but the promised banana and clove esters were prevalent. The body was sweet with plenty of the original malt flavor present. The alcohol didn’t seem particularly overpowering. It was more of a flavor element than the dominant factor. The overall flavor experience was promising for the future of the mature product. I think I’ll enjoy drinking this.

Then I started bottling. I thought this would be a messy ordeal, so I planned some steps to keep things clean, like a bowl under the bottling area to catch any spillover or drips from the bottling wand. This proved a wise decision. Cleanup was very easy.

With JM’s and Joleen’s help, the actual bottling process took just under an hour. We formed an assembly line of bottles queuing up to be filled, then the crown caps were placed, then they were crimped.

I drew off the dregs of the bottling bucket for a final taste test and reward to myself for the finished job and enjoyed a couple of nice, tall frosty glasses of ale. There was certainly a bit of sediment in those dregs, and I figured there would be in the last dozen bottles, so I tagged the lids as the bottles that I’ll taste to monitor the maturity over the next few weeks.

Not much to tell today. Still bubbling at 35 seconds. No significant change to activity or clarity.

Looks like I’m not bottling today. The yeast is having too much fun, and it would be a shame to spoil it. They’re creating enough carbon dioxide to cause bubbles every 30 seconds. Even though the foam’s gone flat, there’s still some visible surface activity.

The brew smells great! It looks like I did a good job of keeping contaminants out. I just need to follow the same precautions during bottling and all will go well.

I know it’s been a couple of days since the last update, but things have been progressing more slowly. This is exactly as it should be! I’m just amazed that the process ran its course so quickly.

The airlock is bubbling about once a minute, so I moved the carboy to the kitchen counter to allow the sediments to settle for a day or so before bottling.

I will bottle on Saturday, and I’ll be able to get my first taste of the brew at that time.

More foam settling and the airlock is bubbling once every 35 seconds or so.